The Historia Augusta is a strange book. Ostensibly it is a
collection of imperial biographies from Hadrian to Carinus (117-285
AD) including lives of sundry Caesars and usurpers, composed by six
authors who wrote under the tetrarchs and Constantine.1 The
factual content of the lives obviously varies tremendously; some of
the early lives appear to be closely based on reliable sources,
others are mostly fiction, some may well be nothing but. Even
before the advent of modern scholarship there were doubts about
what could and could not be believed. With the development of
modern critical techniques, these doubts became more serious, and
in 1889 Hermann Dessau solemnly pronounced the work a forgery,
arguing that it was written by a single author at the end, rather
than the beginning, of the fourth century.2

In the very next year, Theodor Mommsen responded to Dessau's
article with a massive defense of the traditional date, though
conceding that there was some later manipulation of the corpus in
the age of Valentinian and Theodosius I.3
Controversy ensued.
Although many classicists have remained blissfully ignorant of the
consequences (readily evident these days in citations such as
Spart. V. Hadr. 16.1 instead of HA V. Hadr. 16.1), the vast
amount
of energy expended on this matter has yielded two points that are
generally accepted by almost all combatants. These are that
Dessau's instinct about the date was correct, as was his view about
the authorship. The first principle is based upon the study of
invented names and literary allusions. The second rests on
probability. Read as a whole, the work comes across as a sustained
joke.4 It is hard to believe that a team
would have been so
consistent in its selection and handling of source material, so
regular in its style of invention, or so consistent in its humor,
to have produced the work that we have.5 In
addition, although
the more elaborate efforts to quantify this impression have been
shown to be inadequate, there does not seem to be any significant
variation in the prose style from the beginning to end of the
collection.6

One other question that has attracted attention through the
years is the reliability of the information that the author
provides. Although it is obvious that there is a good deal of fact
mixed in with the fancy, it has proved difficult to draw a firm
line between the two. Furthermore, there is still a good deal of
debate as to what the ability to draw such a line would gain us: we
still do not have any agreement as to what the author's sources
were, and how well informed these sources were. The latter point
is particularly complicated; even the best historians of antiquity
made mistakes, and, even when we can trace a particular statement
back from the Historia Augusta to a second or third century author,
this does not mean that the account we get is reliable. The
Historia Augusta does offer some unique and valuable information,
but it must be excavated with care.

The result of the various trends in recent scholarship is that
the study of the Historia Augusta has moved in two directions. One
is into the area of late fourth-century literary and intellectual
history, the other towards the realm of second- and third-century
literature and politics. Cécile Bertrand-Dangenbach seeks to unite
these two disparate enterprises in her study of the longest of the
vitae, that of Alexander Severus (54 Teubner pages). The book
falls into two sections after a mercifully short, and
uncontroversial, statement of B.-D.'s position on the composition
issue. After a brief (and useful) chronological outline of
Severus' reign, she explains that she will analyze the life in
light of Gérard Genette's work on narrative functions (B.-D. p.
50), which, as it turns out, will be supplemented with study of
Latin rhetorical works. The second section is an analysis of the
picture of Alexander that the vita provides, in light of the other
extant sources for the reign. The first section of the book is
interesting and suggestive, giving us a better insight into the way
that the author thought about writing the life, and providing
useful discussions of several important topoi. In particular, I
find the application of Genette's work, distinguishing a passage's
"narrative function" (telling the story) and "metanarrative"
function (exploring the implications of the story), a far more
satisfactory method than that used by some writers in English who
seek to identify passages simply as rhetorical, and therefore
false. But it is also much too serious. B.-D. recognizes that
there are literary games being played throughout, but her analysis
is informed by her conclusion that the work is a treatise on good
government that faithfully reflects the political, social, and
religious thought of the late fourth century (p. 120). My feeling
is that the life is a parody of that thought. It may be that our
positions are not that far apart, for parody must reflect the
familiar to be effective, and it can be as devastating. But an
analysis of this life must take account of the fact that if a
critique is being offered here, it is amusing.

A bogus account of a meeting of the senate at which Alexander
refuses the names Antoninus and Magnus takes up five chapters at
the beginning of the life (V. Alex. 6-11), and a large section of
this book (pp. 87-118). In this story, set erroneously on March 6,
222 (the real date of Alexander accession was March 11), Alexander
refuses the names that he was offered on the grounds that the nomen
Antoninorum was disgraced by Elagabalus and that he himself had not
yet done anything great. To B.-D. this is designed to show the
gravitas and constantia of the ideal princeps (as in V.
Alex. 12.3) and stands as implicit criticism of the proclamation of
Valentinian II at the age of four in 375, and that of Theodosius'
sons, Arcadius and Honorius, twenty years later (they were eleven
and eighteen years old respectively) (p. 105). Reflection upon
exempla, of the sort that fills this passage and is used by B.-D.
to support her point, was clearly very important in what passed for
political thought in the fourth century. But are we to take
seriously reflection such as: magni vero nomen cur accipiam? quid
enim iam magnum feci? cum id Alexander post magna gesta, Pompeius
vero {post} magnos triumphos acceperit. quiescite igitur,
venerandi patres, et vos ipsi magnifici unum me de vobis esse
censete, quam Magni nomen ingerite (V. Alex. 11.4). This scene
is
surely a send-up of the sort of pious reflection that fills the
pages of an author like Ammianus, or, to use the language of
theory, the metanarrativistic function of this passage is to
subvert its ostensible narrative function by making it appear too
absurd. When it comes to the nomen Antoninorum the author may
simply be echoing rhetorical flourishes in Marius Maximus'
biography of Elagabalus that were picked up by a number of the
author's contemporaries.7 When the author
describes
Alexander's dislike of panegyric in accord with the exemplum of
Pescennius Niger, the defeated rival of Severus (oratores et poetas
non sibi panygericos dicentes, quod exemplo Nigri Pescennii stultum
ducebat, sed aut orationes recitantes aut facta veterum canentes
libenter audivit) (V. Alex. 35.1), it should be clear that
whatever
the author's message is, it is to be read with a smile.

Imperial ceremonies or damnationes, discussions of
legitimacy
and praefationes -- these are places where the author tends to wax
fanciful and funny. Study of any one life must take account of the
collection as a whole. The author describes (for example) the
murder of Aper as follows: avus meus rettulit interfuisse contioni,
cum Diocletiani manu esset Aper occisus; dixisse autem dicebat
Diocletianum, percussisset: gloriare, Aper, Aeneae
magni dextra cadis. quod ego miror de homine militari, quamvis
plurimos plane sciam militares vel Graece vel Latine vel comicorum
usurpare dicta vel talium poetarum. ipsi denique comici plerumque
sic milites inducunt, ut eos faciant vetera dicta usurpare (V.
Car. 13.3). An author who can argue, while imitating a form of
historical verification, that Diocletian could have recited Aen.
10.830 while killing Aper because soldiers must use elevated
diction since they are brought on stage by comic poets, has to be
read for fun. Comparable examples abound throughout the Historia
Augusta. This is not to say that the same author cannot be
including solid factual material, or that the same author cannot be
trying to say something serious -- this would be to argue a case that
would deny the existence of a great deal of literature. But it is
to say that the problem with B.-D.'s analysis is not with what she
has to say about how the author tells a story (here her
contribution is helpful), but with her view of the way that a Roman
would have read it.

The second half of the book, in which B.-D. compares the picture
of Alexander in the Historia Augusta with those that are provided
elsewhere, is less interesting. Much of what goes wrong here is
not, however, without parallel elsewhere. It begins with the
facile assumption that the literature we have is a fair
representation of what was available in antiquity. This is as
absurd in the area of historical Quellenforschung as it is
elsewhere. In this case B.-D. adopts the notion (which is not
novel) that traditions can be arranged on stemmata like manuscripts
(useful only when there are clear verbal parallels), and invites us
to believe that Cassius Dio, who had some nice things to say about
his consular colleague, influenced the view of fourth century Latin
writers. To be fair, connections with Dio have been suggested by
other scholars; but these alleged connections have never amounted
to much, and we are left without evidence that Dio ever had
influence upon a fourth century Latin audience.8 The further
analysis of the portrait of Alexander that accompanies this
discussion is based upon the assumptions set out in the first part
of the book. Even if there are problems here, this survey does
provide a useful discussion of issues that were of concern in the
late fourth century.

Although I have serious disagreements with some of B.-D.'s
notions about the Historia Augusta, the conception of this book is
valuable. Many of the problems associated with the Historia
Augusta are very old. We need to take a new look at the way this
collection can be read in order to determine what it can tell us
about life and letters in the fourth century. The synthetic
approach that B.-D. takes is a real step in the right direction.

Notes

1. The collection received the title Scriptores
Historiae Augustae from Casaubon in his edition of 1603 on the basis
of the reference
to Tacitus as scriptor Historiae Augustae at HA V. Tac.
10.3. In light of the modern belief that the collection is the work of one
author it is now conventional to refer to the collection simply as
the Historia Augusta. For a good summary of the issues see K.-P.
Johne, Kaiserbiographie und Senatsaristokratie. Untersuchungen zur
Datierung und sozialen Herkunft der Historia Augusta (Berlin,
1976), 11-16.

For a clear statement of this view see R.
Syme, Historia Augusta
Papers (Oxford, 1983), 218-9.

5. For a selection of bad jokes (from lives
attributed to different
authors) see R. Syme, Emperors and Biography (Oxford, 1971),
63.

6. I. Marriott, "The Authorship of the Historia
Augusta: Two
Computer Studies," JRS 69 (1979), 51-64 sought to prove unitary
authorship; the methods used are shown to be faulty by D. Sansone,
"The Computer and the Historia Augusta: a Note on Marriott," JRS 80
(1990), 174-7, though, as Sansone points out, the faults in
Marriott's analysis in no way vitiate the observation that anyone
reading the work would make, that there appears to be remarkable
congruence of style throughout.

8. T.D. Barnes, The Sources of the Historia
Augusta, Collection
Latomus vol. 155 (Brussels, 1978), 81-9, for a good statement of
the situation with regard to Dio. His own belief (shared with Syme)
that the good information in the lives down to Elagabalus goes back
to a biographer other than Marius Maximus is more problematic. For
bibliography on this point see D.S. Potter, Prophecy and History in
the Crisis of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1990), 369 n.
47.